An unfortunate setback
5 months ago
– Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 02:07:03 PM
Good afternoon backers!
We need to let you know about a change in our creative team which is impacting production of the book. Our principal editor, and one third of our writing team, has let us know that he is stepping away from the company and the project effective immediately. Glen has been an incredible presence on our team from the very beginning, and he will be sorely missed.
So, what does this mean in terms of finishing the project? We are in the layout stage of the project, and our Pathfinder resources are reviewing those rules for completeness. I hope to have the layout done in the next couple of weeks. That will let us finalize the page count, open the Backerkit surveys, and move this project to the printing and shipping stage.
We greatly appreciate your understanding, and we are committed to keeping you informed about our progress. Lewanika and I are committed to finishing this project with the degree of quality you have come to expect, and will keep you in the loop as often as we can.
April WIP Update
8 months ago
– Wed, Apr 03, 2024 at 09:06:11 AM
Hey all! Just wanted to give you all a quick update on progress!
Since I last reached out in February, there have been some sort of crazy life events that have happened which have slowed me down a little bit. I am back at it now and up to 73 magic items done. I should be able to finish up the primary writing in a week or two. After that, I am going to throw the document to our staff editor to make sure that I wurded gud and start doing the layout. This probably puts me about two weeks behind plan, but given everything else, I will take it!
Thanks as always, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out!
Josh
February Update
9 months ago
– Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 04:25:31 AM
Good morning friends, and happy Saturday! I wanted to give a brief update on the project, and share with you where some of the writing has taken me. This is sort of my favorite part of these projects, when you had an inkling of an idea and you can sit down and just let that idea run wild. It's taken me to some pretty interesting places already!
The writing is about halfway done. It's easy on a project like this to guage, since I know that I have written 51 magic items out of 100. So far, I have been focusing on groups of items, together with some narrative and story elements. The point of the project is that this is a book of items being written by a renowned storyteller (reliable or not, you decide). I am going to ride this train as long as I can, because grouping these together makes the writing a whole lot easier and as I think about the layout, it will make that feel more cohesive too. The Google Doc is 12 pages now, so figure 25 by the time I am done, and with art and layout the final booklet should be in the mid-30s for page count.
Here's a sneak peek at the table of contents so far:
I just finished writing the bit about the Dragon Cult of Xyssil, and I am really excited about that. Also, I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but I have designed some rough rules around crafting tablets, which are basically rules for divine, scroll-like items. They are different, but that was the idea.
While I am using the rarity guidelines as a way to track how powerful a given item is, I was thinking it didn't make much sense to include that information in the book. Most of the items in the book are going to be unique, one-off items (the tablets are the only exception so far), and for me the rarity implies craftability or at least availability; these items are all quests or adventures in the making. But they are not all legendary-powered items either. I guess that puts the question to you: Do you want the rarity category included with the items in the book? Leave your answer below, or if you have other thoughts on it, let me know!
In the meantime, enjoy your weekend, Spring is coming here to the NE US (I PROMISE! I know it snowed yesterday, shh) and I am excited that these books should be in your hands by the end of April as planned.
Thanks again for your support!
Josh
PS - We have another short form project running right now over on Crowdfundr for Zine Month! Lewanika has written a series of creatures that we are calling The Travelers Guide to Flora and Fauna, Volume 1. We'd love for you to check it out!
Last day!
10 months ago
– Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 07:39:30 AM
Hey all, hope you had an awesome weekend! We are on the last day of our campaign, and I want to say a heartfelt thank you once again to all of you. We're glad that you think this sounds like a neat idea, and like I have said in my conversations with you all, this is a new concept that we are trying out. Based on the early success, we are thinking through how to approach some of our other upcoming projects!
I wanted to give you all a quick glimpse at how the project is starting to shake up. So far, 15 of the magic items have already been written (rough written, they could probably use some polish :) ) and I started with some of the groupings it items that I know I wanted to get through. Here's a quick look at the outline on the working document:
So it might not look like much, BUT the narratives that go along with these sets have included some stuff that I didn't expect it would! Three new NPC type characters already, a few new settings and locales, plus a whole set of crafting rules for what I am loosely describing as the divine magic equivalent of arcane spell scrolls. This is all really rough material, so I make no promises this will make it into the final draft, but I did want you to see a little bit into the process of what this book would look like when we re done.
Enjoy, hope you are excited for this project, and thanks again for backing!
Josh, Glen, and Lewanika
Well, that was exciting!
11 months ago
– Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 03:05:25 PM
Hey all, just dropping a line to say that thanks to all of you, we have already hit our funding goal!
We will be talking more in the near future about this project, and some strategy that we are using here at Tabletop Journeys around projects like this, but in the mean time let me just say a very heartfelt thank you!
Funded in just under six hours! What a world!
Josh, Glen, and Lewanika
